I've been meaning to post the saga of my Hoosier Cabinet refinishing project for some time and hadn't gotten around to it (mainly because of the darn cancer thing).

Hoosier cabinets have been something I've admired for years, but I've never had a place for one in any house that I've had. I believe you would have to build your kitchen to specifically include one of these cabinets. Most are at least four feet wide and sometimes wider.

That's why I was pretty darn excited when I found this smaller size cabinet. While it is in the "manner" of a Hoosier cabinet, I have done a bit of research and have determined that it's probably what they would have called an Apartment size cabinet.

It has the pull out porcelain shelf, a tin-lined bread drawer, a silverware drawer, and racks on both doors.This one didn't include the usual floor bin and sifter or any glass canisters. Someone had painted over the label, so I carefully scraped the ugly ivory paint off the label and discovered that it had been made by the McDougall Cabinet Company.

When I began to dismantle the cabinet to sand, repair, and repaint it, I discovered the warranty label for the porcelain shelf still attached to its bottom. The date of assemble was in 1932. Pretty neat huh?

The bottom was a bit rotten, so Ron repaired that for me. I sanded off most of the old paint and filled in a lot of bings and bumps. It was interesting to note that they must have kept some pretty sharp knives in the silverware drawer. The back of one section had hundred of marks from the points of the knives. I left all those intact - thought that was an interesting bit of history.

The inside is all painted bright white (the same as the wainscotting color) and I decided to go with a "romaine" green for the cabinet color. Sanding it down had found a very similar color, so I tried to bring it back as close to original as possible.

The right hand door also has a early plastic rack. I'm guessing it would have held salt, pepper, and maybe baking powder.

Here's a photo of the before product (kind of a crappy since I took it with the Blackberry).